Sunday, June 3, 2012

Salvation – Clash of Dreams EP (Unreleased, circa 1984/1985)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away when I was still
a poor university student, I actually owned a copy of Salvation’s Diamonds are
Forever LP (Ediesta Records, 1987). To say that it did nothing for me would be
something of an understatement. The mere fact that I can’t find it in my
collection any more strongly suggests that it was one of the many mediocrities
that I hocked to afford bus fare to uni back in the day.

Now that I finally get hold of a copy once again it’s a tad
disappointing that I still can’t find much good to say about it – it remains,
at best a very flaccid beast, hard to listen to without making the “meh” face and it’s easy to see how I was
able to sell it with few regrets.

Mercifully, this is not the album this post is about.

What we are talking about is something much earlier, much,
much better and sadly unreleased.

Salvation were yet another of the burgeoning Leeds Goth
scene in the early 80’s.

Never bearing quite the stature of the early Sisters, MarchViolets or Skeletal Family, yet (initially) working happily alongside them.
With their first single, “Girlsoul / Evelyn” coming out through The Sister’s of Mercy label
Merciful Release appearing in 1983 all seemed well.

Things were sufficiently cosy in fact for Andrew Eldritch to
take mixing duties of Salvation’s new EP, even lending them The Sisters' trusty drum machine Doktor Avalanche and understanding that the band were a
bit skint, to accept payment in magic pixie marching powder in lieu of cash. Everything
seemed fine, and yet the Clash of Dreams EP was never to be released.

So what happened?

Well everyone, both bands and commentators, seem to be a
little coy about saying outright, but the general gist seems to be that it may
have had something to do with the cover art of this little number:

The Sisters of Mercy Body and Soul 12"

(Merciful Release, 1885). Anyone else feeling a sense of deja vu?

Regardless of who came up with the concept first, a schism
does seem to have taken place between Salvation and Merciful Release with the
single Jessica’s Crime (a different version from the EP) eventually emerging on
Simon D of The March Violets’ label Batfish in 1985 and produced by Wayne Hussey.

The Clash of Dreams EP is clearly a child of the Leeds scene – the drum machine alone is a dead giveaway.
Not to mention how much “Burning On” can’t
help but invoke thoughts of The March Violets. What sets Salvation apart from
their Leeds contemporaries however, is the inclination towards psychedelia,
that seems to have become more prominent as their career progressed, perhaps a
result of more prominent groups like The Cult and All About Eve giving license
to such indulgences.

“Jessica’s Crime” is the obvious single here, but really,
the EP as a whole does little to disappoint. You can hear it online here: and I strongly suggest you do. A downloadable version is available at the most
excellent (and apparently sadly dormant) Return to the East blog, but sadly
both versions seem to have been taken from a damaged cassette that has been shakily
repaired. If anyone has access to a more pristine version, please let me know
and I’ll be more than happy to arrange to make it more widely available.

Little of the abandoned Clash of Dreams EP remains.
Jessica’s crime was released as a 7” (Batfish Incorporated, 1985) and Sea of Dreams
would eventually re-emerge in a very different version on Diamonds are Forever.
Nothing else remains.

The October Hour / The Return

Jessica's Crime (7" version)

Meanwhile, Salvation
went on to produce two LPs and a surprising number of singles. With that kind
of dedication, it almost seems rude to scoff at the undergraduate humour that
led them to include a song called “Pearl Necklace” on the B-side of their
Sunshine Superman 12” (Karbon, 1988).

If you did want to chase down Salvation, a compilation
called Salvation: The Complete Collection 1985-89 (Cherry Red, 2005) exists,
apparently a re-release of the earlier Hunger Days 1985-89 comp (Timeslip,
1997) but with the Girlsoul 7” tacked on. It’s readily available on iTunes.

“Good God, they’re
still going!” declared an astonished Mick Mercer way back in 1992 (Gothic
Rock, Pegasus Publishing). If that amazed him then, he’s probably going to spit
his wooden dentures across the room when he discovers that 20 years later,
they’re playing the DV8 festival at the end of this month.

Heads up to those of you in York.

Track Listing:

The
October Hour

Jessica’s
Crime

Burning
On

Sea of Dreams

Figurehead

No
Return

Line Up: Danny Mass (synths), James Elmore (bass), Mike (guitar – but replaced by Choque Hosein before the
Jessica’s Crime 7” was released)

Although the official Salvation site describes this photo as an "early" lineup, the extra head leads me to suspect that is is probably from around 86 when the band decided to replace the drum machine with Paul Maher.

2 comments:

Incredibly great Girlsoul Ep with fantastic drum machine and changes of song pace with melancholic ballad Evelyn and pure psychedelic marathon on B-side with Dust up. And then... the rest of their discography is never even close to their early zenith... lots of material , but a few of really got songs. They even repeated themselves on Sass LP (Sea of dreams and Debris being blank copys of their previous songs...)And why did the six songs Clash of dreams EP never released? The rip of it available on net is low quality one , but still those six songs are a masterpiece. Somewhere I've read that those six songs (recorded in then-best-available-lowcost-studio) were only mr.Eldritchs rehearsal of that particular studio. If Salvation sounds OK there , the Sisters would record then also. Or so I've read...

A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….

About Me

A DJ throughout the 90s at numerous Goth night clubs in Perth including The Cell, Dominion and others he was probably far too drunk to remember, largely as a result of his preference to work for bar tabs over cash. Also helped found 6RTR fm's Goth & Industrial showcase Darkwings.
More recent projects include the currently dormant Descent - a small night dedicated to playing genuinely good Goth music both old and new in preference to packing the dance floor with songs everyone had heard 20 million times before. He currently runs a monthly show on Behind the Mirror on 6RTR fm which can be heard on Wednesdays at 11pm WST.
Rumour has it he once masterminded an ill-advised Goth fanzine "Small Pleasures" that in retrospect, he remains profoundly grateful never made it off his desk.